Pronunciation of Spanish Words

Spanish Pronunciation Summary

In these last few lessons we have covered the pronunciation of Spanish words. We have gone over the alphabet, the vowels, the consonants, and the diphthongs. It is important that I mention you must practice what you have learned so far. You cannot continue on in the language if you do not understand these concepts. Also remember the few extra letters in the Spanish alphabet and the accent marks on certain words. This Spsnish pronunciation summary below will help you to remember what we have gone over.

The Spanish alphabet is just like any other alphabet. You do not have to be afraid of trying to memorize it. Why not be scared? This alphabet is very similar to our English counterpart, which in turn, makes memorization a whole lot easier. In fact, there are only a few new letters for you to learn. Remember that the Spanish alphabet has a total of thirty different letters in it. Some letters like the "CH" will come after the letter "C" in the dictionary. See the alphabet page for more information.

We learned about consonants as well. They are also very similar to English. In fact, this entire language is somewhat similar to English in the way all of the letters are identical, except for a few of course. Also remember the sound of Spanish consonants. They do not sound hard and abrupt like the German consonants do. They are soft and smooth flowing. The Spanish language is a romance language, so things are kept soft and gentle.

Diphthongs are vowels combined to form one sound or syllable. They consist of three different structures. First, they can have a strong vowel followed by a weaker vowel. Second, they can have a weak vowel follow by a strong vowel. Third, they can have two weak vowels. However, if their are two weak vowels in that particular diphthong, you have to stress the second one.

Vowels in the Spanish language are A, E, I, O, U, and once in a while the letter Y. They are not difficult to remember either because they are the same as English (in the way they look). Also note, there are no trailing sounds which follow these vowels. Each letter is unique and distinct with a crisp clear sound to it. Out of all of these, only the letters "U" and "E" might give you some problems at the start. See the vowels page for more information.

The last thing we covered on the pronunciation of Spanish words was accent marks. Accent marks have three main rules when it comes to this language. They are:

• If the word you are dealing with ends in either "S", "N", or a vowel, you are going to put the stress on the next to last syllable. Many words are in this category.


• You place an accent over the vowel of which the stress is assigned to when the word does not end in a vowel. You also do this when you do not have stress on the last syllable.


• For words that end in other letters, you place the stress of the word on the very last syllable. Spanish Vocabulary>>